“You should go home,” Kel repeated, her throat thick. “We can’t do anything but wait.”
More silence, as they sat and watched the flames slowly cocoon and turn to smoke. She wished he would just leave her alone, but she didn’t have the energy to argue.
She wasn’t sure how long had passed when Coup spoke again, his voice crackling with sleep. “I met your dad, once. I’d seen him around Fieror before, but I’d never spoken to him. He came to a public aviary in the city center to perform a quality check. I was just mucking out the grounds. He spotted me, ignored the fawning council attendees, and asked me if I thought the phoenixes’ basic needs were being met.”
Surprise flickered through Kel’s exhaustion, hot and cold.
Softly, she asked, “What did you say?”
Coup smiled. “I told him they treated the phoenixes like AB-infested rodents. They had no idea about different species’ needs or diets or social behaviors.”
“Andyoudid?”
Coup shrugged. “The next day,Nova Presspublished his scathing review of the aviary. The day after that, the Cendorian Council issued them a warning. They had two months to up their standards, or the council would relocate the phoenixes to other aviaries and withdraw the aviary’s very generous funding.”
Something glimmered in Kel’s memory, as faint as the stars overhead. “I remember that. Dad came home from the inspection absolutelyfuming.”
She’d stayed up late that night, drawing in her sketch pad while he’d typed up his livid thoughts.
Kel’s tired cheeks twitched.
Bekn eventually joined them on the hill, as near as Savita would allow him. The three said nothing, and though Kelhatedthat she needed help from anyone, let alone theCoupers brothers, the solace of their presence draped around her like a blanket. Even if only for the next minute, the next hour, Kel wasn’t alone. Savita was at her back and their nearness kept her mind from wading too deeply into static and smoke. Her chest heaved with heavy sobs and her stomach roiled with nausea. Something far deeper than tears escaped her, leaching into the night and easing her shoulders. It stole some of her fear.
As they sat upon that dark hill, watching the pyre dull to an endless gray, Kel thought she glimpsed what Savita’s eternity might look like.
ELEVEN
Kel pulled Savita’s harness reins taut and squeezed her buckled legs. In one long, violent movement, Savita launched into the night sky. A small, flaming hurricane encircled them, sending them upward until Sav leveled out and screeched in joy. Sharp, cold air bit into Kel’s skin and the world shrank, a muted patchwork of darkening paddocks and city lights. Kel’s breath caught in her throat. A familiar brew of fear and awe thumped through her and she let her mind go blank, worries drifting below them.
Her peace was short-lived, though. Sitting behind her, Coup was forced to awkwardly wrap his arms around Kel’s waist for support.
“Can you move forward? I’m half off the saddle,” Coup called, voice strained against the rising winds.
Reluctantly, she inched forward. “You’re lucky I don’t shove you off.”
Coup scoffed. “If I fall, you’d have no one to complain about. You wouldn’t survive.”
Kel ground her teeth as Coup fumbled for balance, legs fastened with the saddle’s rarely used secondary buckles, much too close forher liking. Savita tilted to the right, curving to follow the property’s borders. Her collar restrictions allowed her to soar as high as she’d like, so long as she remained within the outer fence lines of Kel’s home.Theirhome. For as much longer as they could call it that.
Kel’s tears had dried last night, after Bekn and Coup eventually left and Dira had appeared to swathe her in too many blankets. She’d spent the day fussing over Savita, muttering lies and reassurances about their future.
The officers had told her that outdated wiring and overloaded circuits had caused the fire. The aviary and her adjoining office had been reduced to a lifeless skeleton, dark ash and blackened rubble heaped over the ground in scorched clumps.
She wondered if Savita’s rebirth would look the same. If it would leave Kel with nothing but black dust and the ghosts of her favorite memories.
Savita twisted again and Kel moved with her. Without thinking, she pulled Sav’s reins back, her right elbow colliding with Coup’s stomach.
“Alchemists!That was intentional,” he grunted, breathless.
She almost wished it had been. Against the chilling gale, she shouted, “Can you just shut up, if you have to be here? I wanted to fly to clear my head. Not fill it with your whining.”
She hadn’t lost Savita’s saddle or her own riding leathers to the fire; Kel had left both in her cottage, planning to take the former into Fieror for a technician-for-hire to look at. When the stars had begun to twinkle behind the dusk, Kel had realized just how long it had been since she’d flown Savita at night. She didn’t want to waste the chance—not when it might be her last.
Unfortunately, Coup had been equally keen for hisfirstride atop Sav.
“I can’t believe you forced your way up here,” Kel murmured. Sav had remained traitorously nonchalant as Coup had approached. He’d made it clear that, unless Kel instructed Sav to slice through his hamstrings, nothing could stop him from joining them.
She’d been tempted to try to call his bluff, let Sav cut through a few muscles. But she needed him—and the money his riding could bring—now more than ever.
